Coulson Kernahan, born at Ilfracombe, England, Aug. 1, 1858,
is a son of Dr. James Kernahan, M.A. He has contributed
largely to periodicals, and has written in many veins,
alternating serious and religious works with sensational
novels, and literary criticism with humour and sport. It is by
his imaginative booklets--now collected in one volume under
the title of "Visions"--that he is best known. These booklets
have circulated literally "by the million," and have been
translated into no fewer than sixteen languages, including
Chinese. "A Dead Man's Diary" appeared anonymously in 1890,
and attracted unusual attention, the authorship being
attributed, among others, to Harold Frederic and Robert
Buchanan. Since then "A Dead Man's Diary"--of which Mr. J.M.
Barrie, in reviewing it, said, "The vigour of the book is
great, and the author has such a gift of intensity that upon
many readers it will have mesmeric effect"--has gone through
innumerable editions, in England and in America.
_I.--The Ghost of the Past_
Some years ago I became so seriously ill that I was pronounced dying,
and, finally, dead. Dead to all intents and purposes I remained for two
days, when, to the astonishment of the physicians, I exhibited symptoms
of returning vitality, and in a week was convalescent.
Of the moments preceding my passing I recollect only that there came
over me a strange and sudden sense of loss, as though some life-element
had gone out from me. Of pain there was none, nor any mental anxiety.
I recollect only an ethereal lightness of limb, and a sense of
soul-emancipation and peace, a sense of soul-emancipation such as one
might feel were he to awaken on a sunny summer morning to find that
sorrow and sin were gone from the world for ever, a peace ample and
restful as the hallowed hush and awe of twilight, without the twilight's
tender pain.
Then I seemed to be sinking slowly and steadily through still depths of
sun-steeped, light-filled waters that sang in my ears with a sound like
a sweet, sad sobbing and soaring of music, and through which there swam
up to me, in watered vistas of light, scenes of sunny seas and shining
shores where smiling isles stretched league beyond league afar.
And so life ebbed away, until there came a time when the outward and
deathward-setting tide seemed to reach its climax, and when I felt
myself swept shoreward and lifeward again on the inward-setting tide of
that larger life into which I had died.
My next recollection is that the events of my past life were rising
before me. The hands on the dial of time went back a score of years, and
I was a young man of twenty-one, living in chambers off Holborn. One
evening there burst over London a fearful thunderstorm, and hearing a
knock at my door, I opened it, to find a beautiful girl named Dorothy,
the daughter of the housekeeper, standing there. Terrified by the
lightning, and finding herself alone, she begged to be allowed to remain
until her mother's return.
The words had scarcely passed her lips before there came another
blinding flash of lightning, followed almost instantaneously by a
terrific crash of thunder. With a cry of passion and fear, she flung her
arms around me, and the next moment I found myself pressing her to my
heart and telling her, amid a score of burning kisses, that I loved her.
Almost immediately afterwards, we heard the opening of doors, which
indicated her mother's home-coming; but, before leaving, Dorothy told me
that the room immediately above mine was her own. Of the hell-born
thought which rose in my mind as I listened she, I am sure, had no
suspicion. Need I tell the remainder of my story? I think not.
* * * * *
You may wonder, perhaps, why I recall circumstances that happened so
many years ago. You would cease to wonder had you seen the ghost of the
past rise up to call upon God and His Christ for judgment upon the
betrayer. For this was my first glimpse of hell; this was my day of
judgment. The recording angel of my awakened conscience showed me my
sin, and the ruin my sin had wrought, as God sees, and I realised
that--But no! I am sick, I am fainting! I cannot--I cannot write more.
_II.--The Secret of Man's Destiny_
"When anyone dies," I had been told in childhood, "he goes either to
heaven or to hell, according to whether he has been a good or bad man,"
and I recollect being not a little troubled as to what became of the
people whose virtues were about equally matched with their vices. When I
opened my eyes in that ante-chamber of the spirit-world into which I
have had admittance I discovered that heaven and hell as separate places
have no existence, for the good, the bad, and the indifferent exist
together exactly as they exist here. I do not say that there will be no
day of harvesting in which the tares shall finally be separated from the
wheat. On that point, as on many others, I am ignorant. Men and women
whom I know on earth speak of the dead--"the changed"--as being
perfected in knowledge and as having solved for ever "the great secret."
That is not my experience.
So far from "the great secret," the secret of man's destiny and God's
Being, becoming known at death, the facts as I found them are that these
remain almost as great a mystery after death as before.
Even in hell (I use the word as indicating mental or physical
suffering--in my case, the former--not with any local significance)
there are moments when the anguish-stricken spirit is mercifully allowed
a temporary reprieve. Such a moment occurred after the first awful
paroxysm of self-loathing and torture which I experienced when my past
life was made known to me in its true colours, and it was in this saner
and comparatively painless interval that I met one whom I had known on
earth as a woman of the purest life and character. Being still under the
impression that I was in hell in the sense in which I had been
accustomed to think of that place, I started back upon seeing her, and
cried out in astonishment, "You here! _You_! And in Hades!"
"Where else should I be except where Arthur is?" she answered quietly,
and I then remembered a worthless brother of that name to whom she was
passionately attached. "Even Dives in the parable," she went on, "was
unable to forget the five brethren he had left behind him, and cried out
amid the flames, asking that Lazarus be sent to warn them, lest they,
too, came to that place of torment. Is it likely, then, that any wife,
mother, or sister, worthy the name, would be content to remain idle in
heaven, knowing that a loved one was in hell and in agony? We are told
that after His death Christ preached to the spirits in prison, and I
believe that He came here to hell in search of the so-called lost."
"Tell me," I said, "you who are in heaven, if you are perfectly happy."
"You are not altogether wrong in calling this heaven," she replied,
"although it is little more than the antechamber between earth and
heaven. It is my heaven at present, but it will not be my heaven always,
any more than it will be always your hell, and although it is heaven, it
is not _the_ heaven. When I was on earth, I longed for heaven, _not that
I might be delivered from sorrow, but from sinfulness_; and I think I
may say that I am as happy here as my failures will let me be."
"Your failures!" I exclaimed. "I thought we had done with failures."
"You remember the text in the Koran," she said. "'Paradise is under the
shadow of swords.' Here, as on earth, there is no progress without
effort, and here, too, there are difficulties to be overcome. Yet even
on earth there was one element in the strife which lent dignity even to
our failures. Sin and shame are, after all, only human; the effort and
determination to overcome them are divine. Ceasing to be an angel, Satan
became a devil. Man falls, and even in his fall retains something of
God."
After a time we fell to talking of the past, and, mentioning the name of
the very noblest man I have ever known, a man who made possible the
purity of Sir Galahad, made possible the courage of Coeur de Lion--I had
almost said made possible the sinfulness of Christ--I inquired whether
she had seen him in Paradise.
"As yet," she answered, "I know only one of the many circles into which
the spirit-world seems naturally to resolve it. But I suspect that if
you and I could see where he is, we should find him infinitely nearer to
the Father-heart of the universe than I at least can for countless ages
hope to attain!"
"What do you mean by 'circles'?" I said. "Is each human soul on its
arrival here assigned a fitting place and level among his or her
spiritual fellows?"
"There is some such gathering of like to like as that of which you
speak," she answered. "The majority begin in a lower circle, and remain
there until they are fitted to move onward to a higher sphere. Others
take a place in that higher sphere immediately, and some few are led
into the Holy Presence straightway."
And then her voice seemed to sound to me like the voice of one in the
far distance; I felt the darkness closing in upon me on every side, and
knew that my hour of punishment was again at hand.
_III.--DEAD SOULS_
Of all the faces which I saw in hell, there was one which had for me a
fascination. It was that of a beautiful woman, queenly of manner, fair
of figure as a fullblown lily, and with those dark eyes that seem to
shine out from soul-depths, deep as the distant heaven, and yet may mean
no more than the shallow facing of quicksilver behind a milliner's
mirror.
On earth she had deliberately set herself to win and to break the heart
of a trusting lad, and the punishment of her sin was that she should now
love him with the same intense but hopeless passion with which he had
loved her. "My heart is broken," I heard her sob, "and in hell one
cannot die of a broken heart. If I had loved him, and he me, and he had
died, I could have borne it, knowing that I should meet him hereafter;
but to live loveless through eternity, that is the thought which kills
me."
Another sight which I saw was that of a desolate plain, low-lying and
unlighted, in the centre of which there roamed one who called out as if
in search of a companion, but to whom there came no answer save the echo
of his own voice. A more lonely and lifeless spot I have never seen. The
silence seemed sometimes to oppress him like a presence, for, with a
half-affrighted and despairing cry, he set off at a panic-stricken run,
as if seeking to escape this silence by flight; but, notwithstanding his
haste, he made no progress, for he was but moving round and round in a
circle. Once, when he passed near me, I heard him cry out: "Is there no
living soul in all this void and voiceless desert?" And, as he hurried
by, I recognised him as a man whom I had often heard say on earth that
hell would not be hell to him so long as he and his boon companions were
together.
Another whom I saw in Hades I should--save for his pitiable effort to
escape observation--have passed unnoticed. His pitfall in life had been
love of approbation, which was so strong that he was never happy except
in perpetually endeavoring to pass himself off for that which he knew he
was not. The only aim of his existence had been to win the approval of
others, and, lo! one morning he awoke in Hades to find himself the
despised of the despised, and the laughing stock of the very Devil. I
saw few more pitiable sights than that of this wretched creature,
slinking shamefacedly through hell, and wincing, as from a blow, at the
glance of every passer.
During my wanderings I had reason to ask one whom I had known on earth
concerning the fate of an old acquaintance of his own.
"I will tell you all I know, of the man about whom you ask," he said,
"but first let me explain that my sorest hindrance on earth was
unbelief. Once, when I might have believed, I would not, and my
punishment is that now, when I would believe, I cannot, but am for ever
torn by hideous apprehension and doubt. Moreover, there are many things
which, clear and plain as they may be to the faithful of heart and to
the believing, are to my doubting eyes wrapt around in mystery. Into
these mysteries it has been ordained as part of my punishment that I
shall ever desire to look, and of all these mysteries there is none
which fills me with such horror and dread as the mystery of the dead who
die."
"Of the dead who die!" I said. "What do you mean by those strange words?
Surely all who die are dead."
"They are my words," he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh.
"The words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove
so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have
discovered. When first I came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven,
the faces of most of the dead whom I had known on earth, but some faces
there were--the man of whom you ask was one--which I missed, and from
that time to this I have never seen. 'Where, then, are they?' I asked
myself, 'since neither earth, hell, nor heaven knows them more? Has God
some fearful fate in store for sinners, which may one day fall upon me
as it has already fallen upon them?' And so I set myself to discover
what had become of these missing faces, and you shall hear the result.
"When you and I were children, we were taught that every human being is
born with an immortal soul. But they did not tell us that just as
neglected diseases can kill the body, so unchecked sin can kill the
soul. But it is so, and that is what I meant when I said that he of whom
you asked was 'of the dead who die.'
"You shake your head, and mutter that I am mad. Well, perhaps I am
mad--mad with the horror of my unbelief; but why should it not be as I
say? When God made man He made a creature to whom it was given to choose
for himself between good and evil. But God knew that some of those He
had thus made would deliberately choose evil, that some few would indeed
sin away all trace of their Divine origin. God did not _will_ it so, for
He made us men, not machines, and the evil we do is of our own choosing;
but God _fore-knew_ it, and, foreknowing that, God owed it to Himself
not to call into being a creature the result of whose creation would be
that creature's eternal misery. Hence it was that He decreed that those
for whom there could be no hope of heaven should die out at their deaths
like the brutes. Our life is from God, and may not God take His own
again? And could anything better happen to many people whom you and I
have known on earth than that they should be allowed to die out, and the
very memory of them to pass away for ever?"
I was convinced that he was mad--mad, as he had himself hinted, with the
horror of his unbelief.
"And I am one of them," he exclaimed. "I am of the dead who die! I have
bartered away life, faith, and happiness for Dead Sea fruit; I, who once
was young, and not altogether as I now am, a soulless creature of clay!
For I can remember the time when flowers, pictures, beautiful faces, and
music set stirring emotions within me, in which it seemed that I saw
hidden away in the depths of my own heart the shining form of a
white-robed soul-maiden, who cried out to me: 'Ah, cannot you make your
life as pure and beautiful as the flowers and the music, that so you may
set me free?'
"But I chose the ignoble part, and gave myself up, body and soul, to
evil and unbelief. And often in the hour when I was tempted to some
shameful action I seemed to see the white arms of the soul-maiden
uplifted in piteous entreaty to heaven, but at last the time came when
her voice was silent, and when I knew that I had thrust her down into a
darkness whence she would never again come forth!
"And now the very soul of me is dead, and I know not but that at any
moment I may flicker out like a spent taper, and become as one of the
dead who die!"
_IV.--On the Brink of the Pit_
At last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay
so heavily upon me that I felt, if succour there was none, the very soul
of me must die.
Of myself, save for the continual crying out of my soul after its lost
purity, I scarcely cared to think. It was for Dorothy that I never
ceased to sorrow, and--sinner though I was--to pray. I saw then,
pictured forth in all their horror, the inevitable consequences of the
wrong I had done her. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but
fresh upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read
the knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her not knowing where to
turn for refuge from swiftly advancing shame and understanding no more
of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb, wandering farther and
farther in the nightfall.
And then--driven out from their midst by the very Christian women who
should have been the first to have held out a hand to save--I saw her
turn away with a heart hardened into indifference, and plunge headlong
into a bottomless gulf of ignominy and sin. Nor did the vision pass
until, out of that seething vortex of lust and infamy, I saw arise the
black phantom of a lost soul crying out unto God and His Christ for
judgment upon the betrayer.
As these hideous spectres of the past came before me, I fell to the
ground, borne down by a burden of agony greater even than the very
damned in hell can bear. But even as I fell, that burden was lifted and
borne away from me, and then I saw, as in a vision, One kneeling in
prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could bear the burden of my sin
no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not only my sin, but the sins of
the whole world, and that He stooped of His own accord to receive them.
And as I looked upon the Divine dignity of that agonised form--forsaken
of His Father that we might never be forsaken--I saw great beads of
blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung from Him a
cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from human lips.
And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find myself in hell
once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of the wings of
hope--the hope which I had deemed dead for ever.
_Could_ it be--O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might
not be too late?--that there was indeed One Who could make my sin as
though it had never been?
But to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonised thought,
"How if there be no Christ?" leapt out at me, like the darkness which
looms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell got
hold of me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my
ear: "And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?"
I reeled at that cry, and the darkness once more closed in around. A
horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed like vermin
in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending fiends upon
my face; a hundred hungry hands seemed to lay hold on me, and to strive
to drag me down and down to a bottomless pit that opened at my very
feet, and into which I felt myself slipping. With a great cry to God I
strove to rise, but my strength failed me, and I had fallen back into
the abyss had not one, white-robed as the morning, come suddenly to
succour me by stretching forth a hand of aid; and so--beating and
battling like a drowning man for breath--I fought my way out, and fell
sobbing and faint upon the pit's brink. And with a great cry of anguish
I prayed aloud, "Lord Christ! I am foul and sinful! I do not know that I
love Thee! I do not even know that I have repented of my sins! I only
know that I cannot do the things I would do, and that I can never undo
the evil I have done. But I come to Thee, Lord Jesus, I come to Thee as
Thou biddest me. Send me not away, O Saviour of sinners."
As I made an end of praying, I looked up and saw standing beside me One,
thorn-crowned and with wounded side, _Whose features were the features
of a man, but Whose face was the face of God_.
And as I looked upon that face I shrank back dazed, and breathless, and
blinded--shrank back with a cry like the cry of one smitten of the
lightning; for beneath the wide white brows there shone out eyes, before
the awful purity of which my sin-stained soul seemed to scorch and to
shrivel like a scroll in a furnace. But as I lay, lo! there came a
tender touch upon my head, and a voice in my ear that whispered, "Son."
And as the word died away into a silence like the hallowed hush of
listening angels, and I stretched forth my arms with a cry of
unutterable longing and love, I say that He held one by the hand--even
the one who had plucked me out of the abyss into which I had fallen--and
I saw that it was Dorothy--Dorothy whom He had sought out and saved from
the shame to which my sin had driven her, and whom He had sent to
succour me, that so He might set upon my soul the seal of His pardon and
of His peace.
* * * * *